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In Sweden we have Mat -Tina, who steal from every chef she can find, even their monologues translated to Swedish. And she repeats the word smaka smaka smaka ( taste, taste, taste) until you just want to add her to one of her dishes. Her first cookbook has smaka smaka smaka every second page, the food pictures are out of focus or taken in such weird way the food looks horrible.

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"Conviction Kitchen", with Mark Thuet and his wife. It was a trainwreck.

Thanks suet. Now that I've looked up their pictures I realize I've seen their faces before - and I know I've seen his cookbook in my favourite cheap clearance bookstore. Must have come out after I stopped watching much in the way of Food Network because there was rarely anything worth seeing.

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And it was on Canadian Television, the same network (there is more than one, isn't there?) that made the excellent "How It's Made" series that shows productions lines of everything from snacks to lawn tractors to industrial tooling.

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I do have a winner in bad show hosts. Ernst, does multi shows, like fake building a house and then cooking, well once he made Schnapps out of a poisonous plant and said it was a whole different plant, well the plants do not even look the same. The poisonous one has a strong smell and pointy leafs and the safe one has round dusky green leafs and doesn't smell.

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Sadly, fate has brought us to the point where the number of "worst" cooking shows far exceeds the quality cooking shows. In terms of the worst shows of the day, my votes go to The Next Food Network Star and Master Chef, aka from the house of Gordon. Both shows are terribly detached from true cooking and cuisine and as interesting as Premium Saltine Crackers, but I suppose if you are looking to shill soup in Food Network Magazine, you need a young, sprite, cutesy sort of personality. But there is hope my friends in the form of the true "Master Chef"--as in the UK version. You can view a number of episodes on You Tube, including this production with incredibly vivid, delicious images of food. And whoever said British cooking is bland isn't aware of the creativity going on in the UK today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMXbIo0GFMo

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Sadly, fate has brought us to the point where the number of "worst" cooking shows seemingly far exceeds the quality cooking shows. In terms of the worst shows of the day, my votes go to The Next Food Network Star and Master Chef, aka from the house of Gordon. Both shows are terribly detached from true cooking and cuisine and as interesting as Premium Saltine Crackers, but I suppose if you are looking to shill soup in Food Network Magazine, you need a young, sprite, cutesy sort of personality. But there is hope my friends in the form of the true "Master Chef"--as in the UK version. You can view a number of episodes on You Tube, including this production with incredibly vivid, delicious images of food. And whoever said British cooking is bland isn't aware of the creativity going on in the UK today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMXbIo0GFMo

David? Do you think the lack of good shows correlates to the COMMERCIALIZATION and marketing?

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I love Master chef UK but here in Sweden they yet again do the american version for the Swedish market and it just clash with the Swedish mindset. I hate it, the judges are rude, annoying and un Swedishly in your face.

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Masterchef UK and Masterchef: The Professionals are both stellar shows. Love the emphasis on cooking, love the seriousness of the amateurs, and love the challenges (mystery box, skills test, invention test, etc.). Masterchef USA is nothing like the original format. In general, the US-based shows all have too much emphasis on the competitive aspect of the show (earning ways to screw everyone else, lots of contestant conflict) whereas the original UK shows focus on the food. The contestants rarely have a bad word for each other, and there's none of the "twists" which so often cause conflict and backstabbing.

Basically, the UK food shows almost universally beat the US versions. And I say this as a Canadian.

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I love the British shows, but they do have their weird people too. Oh you have to see Posh Nosh, it is parody of cooking shows and it makes me laugh!

Am I the only one who doesnt like Martha Stewart ? Every time she say cheap or affordable is expensive.

Martha gives me the willies. She's got a baking show on now in our area, but she can't measure worth squat, yet she talks about how important it is to measure properly. If she really felt that way, she would tell us all to buy a scale, and show us how to use it.

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Martha is a businesswoman, not a chef. I bought one of her cookbooks about 20 years ago and ended up giving it away.

I also love the Brit shows. There was one, "Come Dine With Me" that was hilarious. It pitched together four random strangers they took turns cooking in their homes for the others. There was one with an Indian woman who brought her own chilli sauce with her and doused all her meals with it before she tasted the food. One had a vicar who cooked a meal at the rectory. Another a woman of some means who lived in a castle. Others lived in row houses, on farms, &c. I liked it not so much for the cooking---although that was interesting---but for the character studies. The voiceover was overly dramatic and you knew the whole show was a gag.

Sometimes literally.

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annabelle: Well British shows tend to have what you would call overly dramatic voiceover, it their way of being funny. You should see some of their building shows, can be a real hoot. I love come dine with me.

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Martha is a businesswoman, not a chef. I bought one of her cookbooks about 20 years ago and ended up giving it away.

I also love the Brit shows. There was one, "Come Dine With Me" that was hilarious. It pitched together four random strangers they took turns cooking in their homes for the others. There was one with an Indian woman who brought her own chilli sauce with her and doused all her meals with it before she tasted the food. One had a vicar who cooked a meal at the rectory. Another a woman of some means who lived in a castle. Others lived in row houses, on farms, &c. I liked it not so much for the cooking---although that was interesting---but for the character studies. The voiceover was overly dramatic and you knew the whole show was a gag.

Sometimes literally.

I loved that, too. The series I saw was filmed in Canada, I think. Some of the evenings did seem pretty ghastly. As I recall, several of the hosts thought that it would give them a big edge if they provided some sort of special entertainment presented by themselves - like a bad cello (was it?) performance by the host that lasted half the night. It was particularly enjoyable when a smug, conceited host lost. And, although I get that not everybody is as familiar with Mexican/Spanish names as folks such as I that live in the US Southwest, I found it particularly grating to have one hostess go on and on about her special "OX-ican" meal, complete with OX-ican cheese, recipes, etc. The mispronunciation all by itself would not have been so grating, but she had a rather superior and condescending tone in her voice as she explained all about it to her "ignorant" guests. I couldn't help but think that if I were trying something new, and I had planned a little lecture on the subject, I think I'd make an effort to learn how to correctly say the name.

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Did anyone see that cooking show hosted by the biker chick? I thought that one was pretty awful.

But the one I hate most is Hell's Kitchen. Hell, indeed. I can't stand the language, the vulgarity, the brutality, the screaming, the hollering, the pillorying, the humiliation of one another. Hell indeed. So why would I intentionally want to put myself in Hell? Turns out, I don't.

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Hell's Kitchen is awful. I watched one season of it and tried to watch another and thought "Why am I watching this crap?" You can't even root for the contestants since they are so detestable. Smoking, boozing, cursing, physically fighting. Who needs that?

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"Come Dine with Me" is great! I didn't like the Canadian version at first, but warmed to it after a while....once the commentator stopped trying to be *exactly* like the British guy (who is hilarious) it got a lot better. My favorite was Cathy, who was so bad she made it to the "Redemption" special with 4 other horrible cooks. Girl got drunk prepping her food, and would up pulling her container of heavy cream out of the trash before whipping it up to serve with dessert. Also was entertained by that blonde magician with the big mohawk (Dylan?) who had his worm composter in the kitchen.....

I grew up watching Natalie Dupree and Joanna Lund in amongst all the greater PBS food programs, so have a special place in my heart for the trainwrecks.

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There ought to be a sub category of this thread titled "the Worse Kitchen Equipment and Books Commercials". I'd like to nominate the commercial for Dump Cakes Dump Dinners and the Green pan" all available for $10.00. For one dump dinner therecipe calls for putting some ground beef (unbrowned) into the pan, throwing in some pasta, pouring a bottle of tomato sauce over it , sprinkling on some cheese, and baking it for a dinner your family will love. These dump(ster) recipes make Sandra Lee look good. I think the purchasers of these books should be working wives who come home and have to cook dinner for a husband who's already half-way through his first six-pack and sullen teenagers who don't lift a finger to help. After all, who could blame them for buying these books and subjecting their family to the recipes in them?

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"Come Dine with Me" is great! I didn't like the Canadian version at first, but warmed to it after a while....once the commentator stopped trying to be *exactly* like the British guy (who is hilarious) it got a lot better. My favorite was Cathy, who was so bad she made it to the "Redemption" special with 4 other horrible cooks. Girl got drunk prepping her food, and would up pulling her container of heavy cream out of the trash before whipping it up to serve with dessert. Also was entertained by that blonde magician with the big mohawk (Dylan?) who had his worm composter in the kitchen.....

And who was the woman that invited a bunch of lively dancing party guests to jazz up the evening?

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I just watched through a Swedish show... gha... the person uses a " dialect" that consist of English words to sound "cool" and made up words, yeah this the Swedish spoken in our Capitol. *facepalm*

Even better it is subtitled in correct Swedish. Anyway wouldnt be so bad if he wasnt trying to get people to eat a very poisonous plant, he uses the directly translated word for spring onions , vårlök, how ever this in Sweden is a plant that gives liver damage and spring onion is salladslök (salad onion). It been 20 years of the miss translation and people ending up in hospital due to eating the wrong plant.